LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

di^ap. ij'tiirij};! "^o. 

Shell _^ 7/ 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



The Liberal League 



mONAL ELECTIONS. 



W. S. BUSH 



NO MAN IS GOOD ENOUGH TO COVER* ANOTHBR MAN WITHOUT THAT OTHER MAN S 

CONSENT." — Adrahatn Lincoln. 

" A GOVERNMENT OF THE PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE." — Idle/. 






( . I'. F.\RRELL, 

1 42 1 NliW YORK AVENUE, 

WASHINGTON, D. C. 

1880. 



L 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1880, by William S. Bush, in the 
office of the Librarian of Congress, Washington, D. C. 



1'. K( KLKK, Printer, ;iS I'^ilton St., N. V. 



POLITICAL DEMANDS OF LIBERALS, 



PROPOSED POLICY. 

It is proposed by some Liberals that the National 
Liberal League, without pledges from Hancock or the 
Democratic party, should unite and vote with that party. 
They insist that Hancock or Garfield will be ele6led : that 
no separate nominations be made, and that the League 
abandon its specific demands for this campaign, and take 
the democratic ticket on trust. 

Liberals may be said to have definitely abandoned sep- 
arate nominations in this campaign. Some will support 
Weaver. Others denounce him as a church member ; 
but that does not prove that he is a bigot. He is to-day 
battling for free speech, and an honest ballot in the South- 
ern States. He defends the rights of labor. He stood 
up bravely in Congress against the despotic rulings of 
Speaker Randall, who with the applause of his party, 
centralized power in his own hands and throttled the 
right of petition and free inquiry. The Democratic Chair- 
man of the Committee on Appropriations is an autocrat. 
The Democratic rank and file in Congress are afraid to 
do justice to honest claimants, fetter themselves with self- 
imposed rules, and waste the session in partisan investi- 
gations, and vigorous protests against presidential vetoes 
and bayonets at the polls, and in attempts to unseat hon- 
estly elected Greenback and Republican representatives 
so that they may have a majority of the States in case the 
people fail to ele6l a President. 

The Greenbackers have fought the partisan schemes 
of the Democratic Congress, and have proved themselves 
in the South the allies of liberalism, in their demand for 
free speech and an honest ballot. 



2 POLITICAL DEMANDS ON LIBERALS. 

II. 

DEMANDS OF LIBERALISM. 

The political demands of the Liberal League were 
declared in the resolutions of the Congress of 1879: 

Resolved, That we deem it expedient for the Liberals 
of this country to act as a political organization for the 
accomplishment of the following objects : 

1. Total Separation of Church and State, to 
be secured under present laws and proper legislation, and 
finally to be guaranteed by amendment of the United 
States Constitution ; including the equitable taxation of 
church property, secularization of the public schools, 
abrogation of Sabbatarian laws, abolition of chaplaincies, 
prohibition of public appropriations for religious purposes, 
and all other measures necessary to the same general end. 

2. National Protection for National Citizens 
in their equal political, civil, industrial, and religious 
rights, irrespeclive of race or sex \ to be secured under 
present laws and proper legislation, and finally to be 
guaranteed by amendment of the United States Constitu- 
tion, and afforded through the United States Courts. 

3. Universal Education the Basis of Universal 
Suffrage in this Secular Republic ; to be secured 
under present laws and proper legislation, and finally to 
be guaranteed by amendment of the United States Con- 
stitution, requiring every State to maintain a thoroughly 
secularized public school system, and to permit no child 
within its limits to grow up without a good elementary 
education. 

IIL 

THE NECESSITY FOR REFORM, 

Is shown by the ostracism of infidels from office, from the 
witness box, and from social recognition in many of the 
Southern States, and by the vigorous denunciation of all 
independent voters. Free thought is branded as a crime, 
and independence as treason to the State. Tissue-ballots 
and fraud or force defeat the honest vote cast by the 



POLITICAL DEMANDS OF LIBERALS. 3 

legal voters. Religious tests for office and for witnesses 
are exacted. An infidel may be robbed and his family 
murdered in his presence, in most of the Southern States, 
and he cannot be heard as a witness. To him the Courts 
are barred—justice is blind. 

The principle of the old colonial codes, that Negroes 
and Indians might be enslaved because they were 
" Infidels "—that they had no rights Christians were 
bound to respea— that they could not be witnesses 
against Christian slaves— is still preserved in the exclusion 
of Infidels from office and from the witness stand. Within 
the year past Darwinians have been refused the right to 
testify in Maryland and Tennessee. The Negro, who is 
not an Infidel, is enfranchised ; but in name only. He 
votes at his peril, except for the regular Democratic 
ticket, and eledion judges presume any other ballots to 
be void, and cast them out or count them on the other 
side. 

In some of the Northern States, statutes and decisions 
made by Christian legislators and judges of the theocratic 
periods of the Colonies, still survive. Old Puritanic laws 
are enforced in a spasm of sandity, or new laws enaded. 
Colonial statutes against blasphemy, enaaed when it was 
a crime to think, when the church admitted only its own 
members to citizenship, when the town meetings were 
held in the meeting-houses and presided over by minis- 
ters, when Quaker women were publicly whipped naked 
from town to town in New England, and Unitarians were 
burned at the stake in England, are suffered to remain as 
land-marks of the barbarism of the early Christianity of 
this country. 

The old Colonial dogma, that the church must be 
sustained at the common expense of the town, still exists 
in part in the form of voting public funds to sustain church 
institutions and charities, and in the exemption of church 
property from its equal share of the public taxes. The 



4 POLITICAL DEMANDS ON LIBERALS. 

homes of the poor are taxed and sold for taxes to protedl 
the untaxed palaces and property of the church. 

Relics of barbarism still exist in many of the States : 

In Arka7tsas, a person who denies the being of God, 
cannot hold any civil office in the State, nor be competent 
to testify as a witness in any court. 

In Delaware, unbelievers are not allowed to testify. 

In Georgia, India^ia, and Maine, religious belief goes 
to the credibility of the witness. 

In Maryla7td, a witness is competent, provided he 
believes in the existence of God, and that under his dis- 
pensation, such person will be held morally accountable 
for his a(?ls and be rewarded or punished therefor, either 
in this world, or the world to come. 

No person can hold office who does not believe in the 
existence of God. 

In Mississippi, the Constitution provides that no person 
who denies the existence of a Supreme Being, shall hold 
any office. 

In North Carolina, it is provided that all persons who 
shall deny the being of Almighty God, shall be disquali- 
fied for office. 

In Pennsylvania, in order to be a competent witness, 
" one must have his conscience alive to the conviction of 
accountability to a higher power than human law." 

In South Carolina, a person who denies the existence 
of a Supreme Being, is not permitted to hold any office. 

The Constitution of Tennessee provides, that no person 
who denies the being of a God or of a future state of 
rewards and punishment, shall hold any office in the civil 
department of the State. 

Evolutionists are not competent as witnesses. Herbert 
Spencer or Darwin could not testify in any court. 

Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachu- 
setts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Pe7msylvania, Rhode 
Island, and Vermont, still maintain Statutes against 



POLITICAL DEMANDS OF LIBERALS. 5 

blasphemy which were enaded in Colonial times by legis- 
latures composed of church members, who copied the 
ecclesiastical common law of England.* 

On suffrage the Liberal League agrees with Benjamin 
Franklin, who stated the fundamental principles of govern- 
ment to be : 

" That liberty or freedom consists in having an actual 
share in the appointment of those who frame the laws, 
and who are to be the guardians of every man's life, 
property, and peace; for the all oi one man is as dear to 
him as the all of another ; and the poor man has an equal 
right, but more need, to have representatives in the legis- 
lature than the rich one. That they who have no voice 
nor vote in the eleding of representatives, do not enjoy 
liberty, but are absolutely enslaved to those who have 
votes, and to their representatives ; for to be enslaved, is 
to have governors whom other men have set over us, and 
be subject to laws made by the representatives of others 
without having had representatives of our own to give 
consent in our behalf" 

IV. 

ALLEGED CRIMES OF THE REPUBLICAN 
PARTY. 

The reasons assigned for abandoning the Republican 
party, are : 

1. The postal laws, and conviction of Bennett. 

2. Attempting to pass a "God in the Constitution" 
amendment. 



In France alone of self-governed countries, religious dissent is not a 
bar to political advancement. Still the enemy of pro<rress there is 
the enemy of freedom here. Its leaders say • n^^^ss there is 

_ " Religious Ijl^erty IS merely endured until the opposite can be carried 
mto ertect. — Bishop O Connor. 

"If the catholics ever gain, which they surely will do, though at a 
distant day, an immense numerical superiority, religious freedom'is at an 
end." — Archbishop of St. Louis. 

"There is, ere long, to be a state religion in this country, and that 
state religion is to be Roman Catholic. ' '—Father Ilcckcr. 



6 POLITICAL DEMANDS OF LIBERALS. 

3. The Electoral Commission. 

4. The National Election Laws. 

5. Centralization of Power. 

6. The nomination of James A. Garfield for President. 
The first and second points are those relating particu- 
larly to the demands of the League. 

I. It is claimed that the postal laws declaring obscene 
matter to be unmailable, interfere with the freedom of the 
press, and are unconstitutional. 

It is admitted that State Laws making it a crime to 
publish obscene books or prints, are constitutional. That 
State Courts, in enforcing them, may follow the rulings 
and decisions of the common law courts of England and 
of the Colonies. This is no crime against a free press. 
It is further insisted that the National Government has no 
power to "regulate" the mails, and it is therefore usurpa- 
tion on the part of Congress to interfere with the sovereign 
police power of the States over the literature printed in 
the State, or imported into it. 

On the conviction of Mr. Heywood in Massachusetts, 
T. B. Wakeman, Esq., addressed an indignation meeting 
in Boston, and said : 

"You have long standing and sufficient laws on the 
whole subject in Massachusetts, and if Mr. Heywood 
had been foimd guilty under them, I should have left the 
matter to you as her citize7is ; I should never have co7ne 
here to enter a protests 

The precedents of the common law of England and of 
Massachusetts were followed in the United States Courts. 
The conviction of Carlisle in England in 1819, was for 
violation of the common law of England against blas- 
phemous and obscene publications, by the publication of 
Paine's Age of Reason. The conviction of Kneeland in 
Massachusetts in 1S34, was for publishing "a scandalous, 
blasphemous, and profane libel, in which he did wilfully 
blaspheme the Holy name of God," &c., saying, "Univcr- 



POLITICAL DEMANDS ON LIBERALS. 7 

salists believe in a God, which I do not ; but beUeve that 
their God, with all his moral attributes, (aside from nature 
itself,) is nothing more than a mere chimera of their own 
imagination." On appeal to the Supreme Court, Shaw, 
J., in the opinion of the Court, said: "The indictment 
may be considered both as a charge of composing, print- 
ing, and publishing an impious, obscene, and blasphemous 
libel, and also as a direct charge of the crime of blas- 
phemy." 20 Pick, 211. 

The Attorney-General of the United States decided 
Heywood's book was not obscene, and President Hayes 
pardoned him. After that, D. M. Bennett was indicted, 
tried, and found guilty of mailing the same book, by a 
jury trying the case according to the rules of the common 
law and the decisions of State Courts. 

The power given to establish post offices, has been 
held by Congress to include the power to regulate the 
mails, to define and punish postal crimes, and the statutes 
in 1 8 10 and 1825 were so entitled. When Chief Justice 
Marshall was on the bench, no one questioned this power. 
Judge Field, in his opinion in the Jackson case, simply 
followed the early action of Congress and the prior rulings 
of the courts. 

The Colonies had no postal system. The "royal mail" 
in the Colonies, was superseded by the Continental postal 
system of Congress in 1775, and has been purely a 
national matter from that day to this. 

Justice Field says, in Ex parte Jackson, 7 Otto, 735 : 

" The validity of legislation prescribing what should be 
carried, and its right and form, and the charges to which 
it should be subjected, has never been questioned. * * * 

" The power possessed by Congress embraces the reg- 
ulation of the entire postal system of the Country. * '" 

" No law of Congress can place in the hands of officials 
connected with the Post Office service, any authority to 
invade the secrecy of letters and such sealed packages in 
the mail ; and all regulations adopted as to mail matter 



8 POLITICAL DEMANDS OF LIBERALS. 

of this kind, must be in subordination to the great princi- 
ple embodied in the Fourth Amendment of the Constitu- 
tion. Nor can any regulation be enforced against the 
transportation of printed matter in the mail, which is open 
to examination, so as to interfere in any manner with the 
freedom of the press. 

" In excluding various articles from the mail, the object 
of Congress has not been to interfere with the freedom of 
the press, or with any other rights of the people ; but to 
refuse its facilities for the distribution of matter deemed 
injurious to the pubhc morals." 7 Otto, p. p. 735, 736. 

This was the unanimous opinion of the Supreme Court 
of the United States, and disposes of the denunciation of 
the law as unconstitutional because Congress has no power 
to "regulate" the mails. 

On the question of obscene literature, the League 

Resolved, That we are in favor of such postal laws as 
will allow the free transportation through the mails of the 
United States of all books, pamphlets, and papers, 
irrespective of the religious, irreligious, political, and 
scientific views they may contain, so that the literature of 
science may be placed upon an equality with that of 
superstition. 

Resolved, That we are utterly opposed to the dissemi- 
nation through the mails, or by any other means, of 
obscene literature whether "inspired" or uninspired, and 
hold in measureless contempt its authors, pubhshers, and 
disseminators. 

Resolved, That we call upon the Christian world to 
expunge from the so-oalled sacred bible, every passage 
that cannot be read without covering the cheek of modesty 
with the blush of shame,* and until such passages are 

*ln 1833 Noah Webster published a revised edition of the Bible as a 
"matter of moral duty," in which he altered passages by " the insertion 
of euphemisms, words, and phrases which are not very offensive to 
delicacy, in tlie place of such as cannot, with propriety, be uttered before 
a promiscuous audience." In 1842 he wrote of the common version, 
that "many passages are expressed in language which decency forbids 
to be repeated in families and m the pulpit." His edition was endorsed 
by the faculty of Yale College ; also by Methodist ministers who com- 
mended it because the editor had "altered some words and passages, 
which cannot lie uttered before an audience without giving offence, 
especially to females ; which words and phrases subject the Scriptures to 
the scoffs of infidels." 



POLITICAL DEMANDS OF LIBERALS. 9 

expunged, we demand that the laws against the dissemi- 
nation of obscene hterature be impartially enforced. 

General Garfield, in 1876, when a Democratic House 
was revising Sees. 3893 and 3894 Revised Statutes, called 
the Comstock laws, said : 

"I wish to call his attention to a case I have been 
informed was recently decided in one of the courts in New 
York, in which the person was imprisoned in the peniten- 
tiary for a term of years, for being the publisher of a 
journal in which appeared a crazy contribution from 
George Francis Train, wholly theological in its character, 
in reference to the doctrine of the Trinity, in which not an 
obscene or scurrilous word was used at all. Although 
the judge stated, as I am informed, to the jury, that it 
could not be called obscene literature, nor scurrilous, yet 
it was blasphemous in the highest degree, and on that 
statement the jury found the publisher guilty, and he was 
sentenced to three years imprisonment. It has occurred 
to me, when the a6l we passed for a very proper purpose 
last year, is ^iable to constructions of this character, that 
we thereby enter the domain of theological opinion, 
bringing down upon men the odiuvi theologicuni — which 
is perhaps, worse than poHtical odium, when passion is 
aroused — we ought to be exceedingly careful in all our 
legislation touching this subject. * * * * * * 

*' Where freedom of opinion and of the press lie on the 
border of obscenity is a difficult question to determine, 
and I, for one, would be glad if the Committee on the 
Post Ofhce and Post Roads would consent to the refer- 
ence of this bill to the Committee on the Judiciary, not 
because I have anything against my friend's amendment, 
but in order that they may go over the whole subject 
and inquire whether we have not used terms too broad 
and too general in the original bill, that no wrong may be 
done while we are trying to achieve the good which the 
bill was intended to accomplish." 

Co7igressio7ial Record, Special Sessioji, 44th Congress, 
p. 696. 

2. The God in the Constitution Amendment. 

Such an Amendment was asked by certain citizens In a 
petition presented to Congress in 1874. It was referred 

B2 



lO POLITICAL DEMANDS ON LIBERALS. 

to the Judiciary Committee, and an adverse report made 
by Benjamin F. Buder, which was adopted. Congress 
was then RepubHcan. 

In 1875, Hon. James G. Blaine, of Maine, offered in the 
House, the following Amendment : 
ARTICLE xvi. 

No State shall make any law respecting an establish- 
ment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; 
and no money, raised by taxation in any State for the 
support of public schools, or derived from any public fund 
therefor, nor any public lands devoted thereto, shall ever 
be under the control of any religious seel, nor shall any 
money so raised, or lands so devoted, be divided between 
religious se6ls or denominations. 

It was referred to the Judiciary Committee, and reported 

back for passage, August 4, 1876. On the vote passing it, 

James A. Garfield, and every Republican present, voted 

aye. The Democratic vote was divided, Blackburn and 

Knott of Kentucky, and others, voting "no." 

The Amendment was reported to the Senate, and there 
amended as follows : 

ARTICLE XVI. 

'* No State shall make any law respeding an establish- 
ment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; 
and no religious test shall ever be required as a qualifica- 
tion to any office or public trust under any State. No 
public property, and no public revenue of, nor any loan 
of credit by or under the authority of the United States, 
or any State, Territory, distri6f , or municipal corporation, 
shall be appropriated to or made or used for the support 
of any school, educational or other institudon under the 
control of any religious or anti-religious se6f, organiza- 
tion, or denomination, or wherein the particular creed or 
tenets of any religious or anti-religious se6t, organization, 
or denomination shall be taught. And no such particu- 
lar creed or tenets shall be read or taught in any school 
or institution supported in whole or in part by^ such 
revenue or loan of credit ; and no such appropriation or 
loan of credit shall be made to any religious or anti- 
religious se6l, organization or denomination, or to pro- 



POLITICAL DEMANDS OF LIBERALS. n 

mote Its interests or tenets. This article shall not be 
construed to prohibit the reading of the bible in any 
school or nistitution ; and it shall not have the effect to 
niipan- rights of property already vested. 

Sec. 2. ''Congress shall have power by appropriate 
legislation, to provide for the prevention and punishment 
of violations of this Article." 

The clause in regard to the bible did not nullify the 
anti-sectarian portions of the proposed Article. It did not 
compel the reading of the bible in the schools, nor per- 
mit it, but simply provided that this article should not be 
construed to prohibit its being read. The Democratic 
senators opposed the Amendment as an interference with 
the sovereign rights of the States, and voted solidly 
against it. 

These facts show that the Republican party was not in 
favor of ''God-in-the-Constitutlon" Amendment. 
The Republican platform of 1880, is as follows : 
Fourth — The Constitution wisely forbids Congress to 
make any law respecting an establishment of religion, but 
it IS idle to hope that the Nation can be protected against 
the influence of sectarianism while each State is exposed 
to its_ aommation. We therefore recommend that the 
Constitution be so amended as to lay the same prohibition 
upon the legislature of each State, and to forbid the ap- 
propriation of public funds to the support of sectarian 
schools. 

The equal, steady, and complete enforcement of laws, 
and the protection of all our citizens in the enjoyment of all 
privileges and immunities guaranteed by the Constitution 
are the first duties of the Nation. 

In General Garfield's letter of acceptance he says : 
"I cordially endorse the principles set forth in the plat- 
form adopted by the Convention. On nearly all the sub- 
jects of which it treats, my opinions are on record amono- 
the published proceedings of Congress. * '•= * But it is 
certain that the wounds of the war cannot be completely 
healed, and the spirit of brotherhood cannot fully pervade 
the whole country until every citizen, rich or poor, white 
or black, is secure in the free and equal enjoyment of 



12 POLITICAL DEMANDS OF LIBERALS. 

every civil and political right guaranteed by the Consti- 
tion and the laws. "^ * * Whatever help the nation 
can justly afford should be generously given to aid the 
States in supporting common schools ; but it would be 
unjust to our people and dangerous to our institutions to 
apply any portion of the revenues of the Nation, or of the 
States, to the support of sectarian schools. The separa- 
tion of the Church and the State in everything relating to 
taxation should be absolute." 

This fully satisfies the demands of Liberals as to taxa- 
tion, and sectarian appropriations or religious tests for 
office. 

The South has furnished the only successful " God-in- 
the-Constitution " movement. It was headed by Thos. 
R. R. Cobb, of Georgia, a Presbyterian lawyer and de- 
fender of slavery. He was successful in having the re- 
cognition of the Providence of God in the Permanent 
Constitution of the Confederate States, and by a tie vote 
only was defeated in his proposition to prohibit carrying 
the mails on Sunday. He secured also the provision 
that no " law denying or impairing the right of property 
in Negro slaves shall be passed." 

The Constitution of Arkansas, in 1836, provided that, 
"No person who denies the being of a God, shall hold any 
office in the civil department of this State, nor be allowed 
his oath in any Court." 

The Constitution of 1866 had the same provision. That 
of 1868, adopted under the reconstruction laws of 
Congress, prohibited religious tests for office, for voters, 
jurors, or witnesses. The Democratic reconstruction 
constitution of 1874, enacled : "That no person who de- 
nies the being of a God shall hold any office in the civil 
departments of this State, nor be competent to testify as a 
witness in any Courts 

This rule of law governs trials of the common law in 
State and United States Courts in that State. 



National Elections. 
I. 

THE RESULTS OF THE WAR. 

The old dogma, born of despotism and fostered by the 
church, that citizens have no pohtical rights, but only 
such franchises as the King, or Parliament, or Congress, 
or the State Legislatures, may confer, has been pradically, 
prior to the war, the rule in this country. The Revolu- 
tion was a protest against it. The Declaration of 
Lidependence denied its validity, and asserted the Rights 
of Man. The tory and church element combined to 
render the Declaration a dead letter. Constitutions and 
laws were construed in accordance with the precedents 
of judges educated in the theocratic doctrines of New 
England, or the ecclesiastical common-law of Great 
Britain. Voters were disfranchised, slavery protected, free 
speech made pradically a crime, mob rule, at the demand 
of the South, used to suppress free speech at the North ; 
and as the grand culmination of all, to bind the free labor 
of the North in bondage to Negro slavery, civil war was 
inaugurated. 

The war not only struck down the chains of the black 
man, but emancipated the conscience of the North. In 
church and State a great advance was made toward abso- 
lute freedom of thought. The camp fire and battle field 
broadened the ideas of the brave men who composed our 
armies. They burst the manacles of custom and super- 
stition. Freedom, justice, and reason, became the watch 
words of the defenders of the country. The inherent 
rights of manhood were revered as sacred. Having won 
the battle of freedom against slavery and secession, they 
demanded guarantees for freedom, that loyal men, black 
and white, should build anew Republican governments in 



14 NATIONAL ELECTICfNS. 

the South. They also demanded that the same guarantees 
of freedom, exacted by their fathers against the National 
government, should be exacted of the State governments. 
They demanded a definition of citizenship in the National 
Constitution, in opposition to the dogma that there were 
no citizens of the United States, but only citizens of 
States. They demanded that the State should be pro- 
hibited from abridging the rights and privileges of citizens 
of the United States. They abolished the clause of the 
Constitution which adopted the State qualifications for 
suffrage as a basis for national elections, and guaranteed 
to all male citizens of the United States of adult age and 
inhabitants of a State, the right to vote for Presidential 
electors, Congressmen, and legislative, executive, and 
judicial officers of the several States. The right to dis- 
franchise rebels or other felons was conceded on the 
principle that such men were enemies to the nation, who 
had as effectually forfeited their rights as though they 
had expatriated themselves. 

II. 

THE AMENDMENTS— THEIR MEANING. 

The Thirteenth Amendment struck down slavery. 

The Fourteenth Amendment struck down State Rights, 
limited the legislative power of the States, defined and 
established national citizenship, recognized the right of 
suffrage as a right of American citizenship, and provided 
for its protection by the nation in both national and State 
eleclions. The right of a State to deprive a citizen of the 
United States, and resident of that State, of the right to 
vote for Presidential electors, and representatives in 
Congress, was denied, except as a punishment for treason 
■ or other crime. The State had no longer power to dis- 
franchise a citizen because he was colored, had not paid 
a poll tax, did not own personal or landed property, did 



NATIONAL ELECTIONS. 1 5 

not belong to a church, could not read a section of the 
constitution, was not a person of moral charader, or had 
been so unfortunate, by the neglect or fraud of officers, as 
not to have his name on the roll of registered voters. 
The right of suffrage of male citizens was placed beyond 
the control of the State in all national elections. The sole 
privilege granted to the State was to disfranchise for sex 
or crime. But the organic law as framed and enacted by 
the representatives of the soldier freemen of the nation, 
did not stop here. As the executive, judicial, and legis- 
lative officers of the States were sworn to support the 
Constitution of the United States, the supreme law of the 
land, they placed the elections for such officers on the 
same basis as the election of Presidential eledors and 
Congressmen. National qualifications for State elections 
were imposed, and Congress authorized to enforce and 
prote6l those rights. The States were still permitted to 
regulate the qualifications for local and municipal eledions. 
State rights was thus cut up by the roots. The dis- 
tinctive and cherished dogma of the Democratic party was 
annulled. The election of State officers was not only 
placed under the supervision of the nation, but the right 
of adult male citizens to vote for such officers was 
affirmed. This section not only denies the power of the 
State to take away from the people of a State the right 
to vote for executive officers, but requires all State 
judicial officers to be elected by the people. It struck 
down the centralization of power in the executive and 
legislatures of the States, and recognized the right of the 
people to vote for judicial officers. It was a protest of 
the people against the tory, church, and pro-slavery 
legislation by which they had been robbed of their rights, 
and State despotisms of the most infamous character, and 
centralization of power of the most despotic form, built 
up in the name of Republican forms of government. The 
foundation stone of slavery and secession — the sovereignty 



l6 NATIONAL ELECTIONS. 

of the States — was swept away. The people of the United 
States put it under ban — relegated it to the grave of 
slavery and "the lost cause." 

Nor was this all. Fearing that the States would dis- 
franchise citizens at municipal and local elections, on 
account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude, 
the Fifteenth Amendment was adopted, which prohibited 
the abridgment of suffrage, on those accounts, at all 
elections. The exclusive and unlimited right of the State 
over municipal elections, was denied, and Congress em- 
powered tQ enforce this Article. 

III. 

RECONSTRUCTION. 

The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amend- 
ments were opposed by the rebel element of the South, 
and by the Bourbons of the North. The State govern- 
ments of the rebel states had been abolished by secession. 
The State organizations in existence when the war ended, 
were part and parcel of the Confederacy, and expired 
with it. Not one of their officers was sworn to support 
the Constitution of the United States. No member of 
their legislatures had qualified by taking the constitutional 
oath. Their statutes, their acts, their judicial decisions, 
were not only illegal, but were enacted, executed, or 
rendered by men who had no more legal right to govern 
the loyal men of the South, than the generals who led 
the rebel armies. It was the right of force, not of law. 
A government of bayonets — not of the people. The 
loyal men of the South were governed by martial law, and 
not by de facto officers of the States. None of these 
officers had been ele6led at eledlions called by officers 
sworn to support the Constitution of the United States. 
The executive, legislative, and judicial officers of the 
South, claiming to be the state officers at the close of the 



NATIONAL ELECTIONS. 1 7 

war, were never elected or appointed in accordance 
with the forms of law, and never sworn into office under 
the constitution. Their credentials and commissions 
emanated, in fact, from the rebel camp— and their govern- 
ment rose with the bayonet, and fell with the rebel flag. 

"A mere usurper in office can have no authority, and 
can perform no valid official 2iQXr—McCrary on Elections. 

In Pennywit, et al, vs. Foote, et al, 27 Ohio St., 619, 
the Supreme Court of Ohio, held in regard to the Con- 
federate State government of Arkansas : 

*' This usurping government was one unknown to the 
constitution, and in direct antagonism to it, and the 
authority of the federal laws and authority. It could 
acquire no legal authority over the people of the United 
States, and no actual power beyond the range of its guns." 

The loyal men of the Nation, who had defeated these 
usurpers, refused to recognize their forms of government, 
as the legal State governments of the South. They de- 
manded that the loyal people of the South, white and 
black,— the real States which had remained in the Union- 
should reconstruct their governments on the broad basis 
of equality of rights and government by the people. The 
lines were drawn. The Democracy demanded that the 
State officers, claiming to be the State governments of 
the rebel States, should be recognized as the civil power 
of those States, on the same footing as though there had 
been no rebellion. The negro was to have no political 
rights. He was to be free in name only. Their rebel 
state organizations were to be recognized as the state, and 
the army to be withdrawn, or to be subject to the civil 
power of such state officials. They demanded to be let 
alone, by Congress and the Nation. Vallandigham, 
Seymour, Tilden, and President Johnson, were ready to 
agree to this demand. They denounced Congressional 
reconstruction as unconstitutional. They opposed the 
Amendments as annulling the "constitution as it was." 



l8 NATIONAL ELECTIONS. 

IV. 

HANCOCK'S RECORD. 

General Grant and a Republican Congress were op- 
posed to them. General Hancock allied himself with the 
friends of the "lost cause," denounced Congressional 
reconstruction, issued order No. 40, and talked about 
the supremacy of the civil law, and the peace and quiet 
of the South. He was a candidate for President before 
the Democratic convention of 1868, and sustained the 
candidate and platform of that party. The element he 
served then, has now nominated him, and pledged to him 
the solid South. His letter of acceptance is devoted 
mainly to a statement of State rights dogmas, and ex- 
presses his devotion to the Constitution as it was, and the 
construction placed upon it by the Democratic fathers. 
It is evident that he accepts the Amendments — as his 
party accepts them — to be construed in accordance with 
the dogmas of State rights. He surrenders in advance 
to a Democratic Congress, if one is chosen, by his pledge 
to abide by its action. He has not a word to say on the 
separation of church and state. He demands that the 
polls shall be kept free from bayonets ; but does not 
denounce carrying ele6lions by fraud, nor demand the 
abolition of the poll-tax and registration laws of Delaware, 
Virginia, and other states, which deny the poor man the 
right to vote for Presidential electors and Congressmen 
at National ele6lions. 

''General Hancock represents the conservatism of the 
army, of family pride, we might almost say, of a privileged 
class." — Richmond Despatch, {De77t.) 

He is the enemy of progress. 

English is a merciless Shylock. The Democrats ask 
the people to support a "superb" aristocrat and a cormo- 
rant. They do not represent patient labor, honest 



NATIONAL ELECTIONS. I9 

industry, generous deeds, justice, equality, and manhood. 
They have no claims on the sons of toil — no claims on 
Freethinkers or Liberals. 

V. 

THE ELECTION LAWS. 

The cases of United States vs. Cruikshank, 2 Otto, 560, 
and United States vs. Reese, et al, 2 Otto, 214, admit the 
validity of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. 
Justice Clifford, in his dissenting opinion in Cruikshank's 
case, admits that Congress has power to enforce the 
Fourteenth Amendment. At the last session of the 
Supreme Court the election laws were held to be valid. 
The right of Congress to ena6l the laws, and of the Presi- 
dent to use the civil officers of the government to enforce 
them, cannot be questioned. It follows that the United 
States marshal, when he finds that he cannot by his 
marshal's posse, keep peace at the polls, may call upon 
the military arm of the governm.ent to aid him. In such 
case there may be bayonets at the polls, but the bayonets 
are there to aid the civil authorities to keep the peace, in 
subordination to the civil power. General Hancock needs 
to re-read his own orders. December 18, 1867, he issued 
an order : 

"IX. Military interference with ele61:ions, unless it 
shall be necessary to keep the peace at the polls, is pro- 
hibited by law, and no soldiers will be allowed to appear 
at any polling place, unless as citizens of the State they 
are registered as voters, and then only for the purpose of 
voting ; but the commanders of posts will be prepared to 
a6l promptly if the civil authorities fail to preserve peace." 

If this means anything it concedes the right of the 
mihtary officer commanding the troops at the posts to 
decide the emergency, and the extent of the force to be 
used at the polls. The crime of the Republican party, 
in the passage and enforcement of the Constitutional 



20 NATIONAL ELECTIONS. 

Amendments, is, that it has restored the government to 
the position it rightfully held under the early decisions 
of the Supreme Court of the United States. Then the 
sovereignty was in the people as a nation. As a town had 
full control of purely local town matters, so the States had 
full control of local state matters. The nation, alone, was 
invested with sovereign rights. But those rights were 
not unlimited. The matter is well stated in the following 
cases : 

"As a judge of this Court, I know, and can decide upon, 
the knowledge that the citizens of Georgia, when they 
a6led upon the large scale of the Union, as a part of the 
' people of the United States,' did not surrender the 
supreme or sovereign power to that State, but, as to the 
purposes of the Union, retained it to themselves. As to 
the purposes of the Union, therefore, Georgia is not a 
sovereign State. *********** 

" Even in almost every nation which has been denom- 
inated free, the State has assumed a supercilious pre-emi- 
nence above the people who have formed it. Hence the 
haughty notions of state independence, state sovereignty, 
and state supremacy. In despotic governments, the 
government has usurped, in a similar manner, both upon 
the State and the people. Hence all arbitrary doctrines 
and pretensions concerning the supreme, absolute, and 
incontrollable power of government. In each, man is de- 
graded from the prime rank which he ought to hold in 
human affairs. *********** 

" Whoever considers, in a combined and comprehensive 
view, the general texture of the Constitution, will be satis- 
fied that the people of the United States intended to form 
themselves into a nation for national purposes. They 
instituted, for such purposes, a national government com- 
plete in all its parts, with powers, legislative, executive, 
and judiciary ; and in all those powers extending over 
the whole nation." 

Opinion of Wilson, J., in ChisJwlm, Ex., vs. Gco7'gia, 
2 Dallas, 461, 466. 

Jay, J., classed the sovereignty of the state, as the same 
with that of a city, and held that, " at the revolution, the 



NATIONAL ELECTIONS. 21 

sovereignty devolved upon the people, and they are truly 
the sovereigns of the country." Ibid, 472. 

Judge Wilson, whose opinion has been quoted, was a 
member of the Pennsylvania Convention, which adopted 
the Constitution. His speeches in favor of the Constitu- 
tion, not only carried it in his own State, but being 
published widely, were credited with having a powerful 
influence in other States. On the nth of December, 
1787, he said: 

" It is objected to this system, that under it there is 
no sovereignty left in the State governments. I have 
had occasion to reply to this already, but I should be 
glad to know at what period the State govern7nents be- 
came possessed of the supre77ie power. On the principle 
on which I found my arguments — and that is the principle 
of this constitutio7i — the supreme power resides in the 
peopled 

" The genius and character of the whole government 
seems to be, that its action is to be applied to all the ex- 
ternal concerns of the nation, and to those internal concerns 
which affect the States gejierally ; but not to those which 
are completely within a particular State, which do not 
affea other States, and with which it is not necessary to 
interfere for the purpose of executing some of the general 
powers of the government." 

And in regard to the power to regulate commerce 
among the States, the Supreme Court held in the same 
case : 

"" " This power, like all others vested in Congress, is 
complete in itself, may be exercised to its utmost extent, 
and acknowledges no limitations other than are pre- 
scribed in the Constitution." Gibbons vs. Ogden, 9 
Wheaton, 195, I97- 

Even Judge Taney, when not sustaining slavery, 
admitted that " the sovereignty of the United States, re- 
' sides in the people of the various States," and refused to 
follow English precedents as inapplicable, holding " Our 
own Constitution and form of government must be our 
only guide." Fleming vs. Page, 9 How, 618. 



22 NATIONAL ELECTIONS. 

Grier, J., held : " The Constitution of the United States 
was made by and for the prote6lion of the people of the 
United States." League vs. De Young, ii How, 203. 

*'I do not admit that there is any sovereign power, in 
the literal meaning of the term, to be found anywhere in 
our system of government. * * * Sovereign State are 
cabalistic words, not understood by the disciple of liberty, 
who has been instructed in our constitutional schools. It 
is an appropriate phrase when applied to an absolute 
despotism. I firmly believe that the idea of sovereign 
power in the government of a republic, is incompatible 
with the existence and permanent foundation of civil 
liberty and the rights of property," Gaines^ et al, vs. 
Buford, I Dana, Ky., 501. 

VI. 

THE ELECTORAL COMMISSION. 

The Democrats were not willing, in 1876, to have the 
electoral votes counted by the Vice-President of the 
United States. They had prepared a second set of returns 
from four States, from which they hoped to gain at least 
one ele6lor. Under the rule that Congress had simply a 
ministerial duty to perform in footing up the votes upon 
the face of the returns, they expected to count in Cronin 
in Oregon, or the electors from Florida, South Carolina, 
or Louisiana. Legal and valid returns were made by the 
returning boards of the three Southern States. They 
devised the commission in such form that they expeded 
a Democratic majority. The eledion of Judge Davis to 
the Senate ruled him out, and Judge Bradley was chosen 
as the fifth judge. His decisions in regard to the powers 
of the Commission, and in regard to which returns were 
regular, gave the requisite 185 votes to President Hayes, 
and he was declared eleded. The Democrats chose 
their arbitrator and lost by seven to eight. Usually when 
parties agree to submit to the decision of a board, sele6led 
by mutual agreement, they are bound by it. There was 



NATIONAL ELECTIONS. 23 

but one mode of contesting the decision of the commis- 
sion. Congress exhausted its jurisdiction when the vote 
was declared. The right of an appeal to the courts still 
existed, and the statute expressly reserved the right to 
open the question elsewhere. While the Democratic 
party has constantly claimed that Tilden was legally 
ele6led, no step has been taken to invoke the aid of the 
courts. Tilden accepted the finding of the commission 
and of Congress, that Hayes had 185 votes. His position 
as a political martyr, has been a source of consolation to 
his wounded ambition. Declining to be a candidate, his 
party lauded him as the legally-elefted President, but 
defrauded of his office by the theft of the vote of tivo 
States. This is an admission that the Democratic claim 
in 1876, as to the ele6loral votes of Oregon, Florida, 
South Carolina, or Louisiana, was a fraudulent claim. 
No clue is given as to which two States of the four be- 
longed to the Republicans. It will be time to answer the 
charge of theft when Hancock and English, who endorse 
the platform, specify the States referred to. The attempt 
to steal the ele6loral vote in Oregon never would have 
been made by the Tilden managers, if they had in fa6l 
been sure in law of one ele6loral vote from either of the 
other three contested States. The Ele6loral Commission 
held that Cronin had no right to vote as eledlor, and thus 
branded as fraudulent his ele6loral college. 

The statute creating the Commission provided : 

"Sec. 6. That nothing in this act shall be held to 
impair or affe(5l any right now existing under the Consti- 
tution and laws to question, by proceeding in the judicial 
courts of the United States, the right or title of the person 
who shall be declared ele6led, or who shall claim to be 
President or Vice-President of the United States, if any 
such right exists." 

If Tilden was lawfully elected President of the United 
States, he is entitled to the salary of the ofhce. The 



24 NATIONAL ELECTIONS. 

Court of Claims has jurisdiction of such suits. This law- 
having provided for revision by the courts, if there was 
an error of law on the part of the Electoral Commission 
as to their powers, or if frauds had been committed in 
Louisiana, Florida, and South Carolina, that could have 
been proved in the Court of Claims. On the other hand, 
the incumbent of the office could have proved frauds in 
Alabama, Mississippi, and North Carolina — could have 
probed to the bottom the operations of Pelton, Smith 
Weed, Manton Marble, and Cronin — and the men for 
whom they a6led. The fact that Tilden, with the ap- 
proval of his party, did not seek a remedy in the courts, 
justifies the conclusion that the Democratic claim was 
baseless — that they knew Hayes was honestly ele6led, 
and if the honest vote cast had been honestly counted, 
Samuel J. Tilden would not have had 184 votes in the- 
electoral college. 

VII. 

CENTRALIZATION OF POWER. 

This charge is based on the allegation that the 
Republican party has usurped the power which should be 
exercised by the States, and infringes the sovereign 
rights of the States, in conferring power upon the United 
States marshals to appoint deputies for national elections, 
to make arrests for violation of the national election laws, 
and by providing for the appointment, by the courts, of 
supervisors of election. These officers are lawfully ap- 
pointed ; the power to appoint the officers and give them 
jurisdiction is granted in the Constitution. The supremacy 
of Congress over the elections for electors and representa- 
tives is conferred by the Constitution. The subject- 
matter is national. The people of each State have an 
interest in fair elections and an honest vote, and in a fair 



NATIONAL ELECTIONS. 25 

count. The Democratic party admit this in regard to 
elections at the North. They demand that the Fourteenth 
Amendment shall be enforced at the North. They have 
found in Rhode Island that a tax and property qualification 
for suffrage in the case of native citizens is exacted, as 
well as registration of such citizens, while in the case of 
naturalized citizens the ownership of $134 worth of land 
in addition is required. The Wallace committee investi- 
gated the case of Rhode Island, and the majority report 
af^rms, " that the government of Rhode Island, under its 
present constitution, is nearer an oligarchy than a 
democracy ;" * * that they are compelled '' to recog- 
nize Rhode Island as different in her government, her 
institutions, and her policy, from all of her sister common- 
wealths in the Union, and lead us to grasp at any 
provision of the Federal Constitution which fairly 
construed, will grant us power to enforce for her people 
' a republican form of government.' " 

The committee having reached this conclusion, re- 
ported that Rhode Island has no right to a representation 
of two members of Congress if the proportion of disfran- 
chised citizens is as great as they believed. Hence the 
committee reported a bill for an act to provide for such an 
enumeration of persons in the tenth census ** as will clearly 
designate the basis of representation required to be made 
under the Fourteenth Amendment," and in their desire 
for a ballot free from bayonets, but not from fraud, they 
allowed the bill to be postponed. The committee knew 
not only that these state statutes were unjust, but that 
being in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, they 
were void. The States were prohibited from abridging 
the right of adult male citizens from voting at national and 
State elections; and from abridging any privileges of 
citizens of the United States. The rule of law applies 
here as m the issue of bills of credit, or State bank paper. 



20 NATIONAL ELECTIONS. 

In the case of Craig vs. The State of Missouri, 4 Pet, 
436, Chief Justice Marshall held : 

" It will not be questioned that an act forbidden by the 
Constitution of the United States, which is the supreme 
law, is against law," and utterly void. 

" A State cannot do that which the Federal Constitution 
'^declares it shall not do." Briscoe vs. Bank of the 
Co7nmonwealth of Kentucky, 11 Pet, 318. 

In Cohen vs. Virginia, 6 Wheat, 414, the court held 
that " the Constitution and laws of a State, so far as they 
are repugnant to the Constitution of the United States, 
are absolutely void." 

In Cuminings vs. State of Missouri, 4 Wall, 322, the 
test oath clauses of the State Constitution, prohibiting 
persons from holding office or following the professions, 
unless they purged themselves of treasonable acts or sym- 
pathies, was held to be a bill of attainder, and void. This 
ruling was made in favor of those who sympathized with 
the "lost cause." Under the same rule, the poll-tax, 
property and religious disqualifications of voters and 
citizens in the Northern and Southern States, are bills of 
attainder subversive of civil rights, enforced by ministerial 
officers, without trial by jury, and are therefore absolutely 
void. 

In Delaware, by an unfair apportionment, Newcastle 
County, with half the population of the State, has but one- 
third of the representation in the legislature. In 1878 
thousands of voters were disfranchised because they had 
not paid a poll-tax. In 1880, to prevent the Republicans 
and Independents from gaining control of the State, the 
names of many more voters were stricken from the regis- 
tration list, and the Democratic judges were compelled 
by the United States courts to reinstate them. It is con- 
ceded that the Amendments to the Constitution struck 
out the word " white " as a qualificadon for suffiage ; and" 
by the same rule, the poll-tax qualification was abolished. 



NATIONAL ELECTIONS. 2*] 

It has been decided, and rightly too, in Wisconsin, that 
an arbitrary registration law, which disquaUfies every 
citizen otherwise entitled to vote, because he is not regis- 
tered, is unconstitutional and void. The poll-tax and 
registration laws of Delaware are void ; and the poor men 
and working men of that State should unite to overthrow 
the Democratic oligarchy which now plays the despot in 
the name of State Rights. 

VIII. 

THE REMEDY PROPOSED AND ABANDONED. 

In accordance with these decisions, the committee should 
have reported that the State laws were nullities, that the 
restrictions were not binding on any citizen of adult age, 
and that their right to vote should be protected by super- 
visors of election appointed under the national election 
laws. In this mode, such illegally disfranchised citizens 
would have been protected, and their votes received and 
counted. Instead of meeting the question like men who 
were determined to enforce the law, and prote6l the 
constitutional rights of the native as well as foreign -born 
citizens, the committee proposed a measure which 
postponed all relief until after the next Presidential elec- 
tion, and the Democratic Senate dropped the bill itself 
If the Democratic Senators had made the investigation in 
good faith, if they were determined to do justice, if they 
had made up their minds that a violation of the Fourteenth 
Amendment by State laws made such a government an 
oligarchy, and anti-republican, their report would have 
stated the law not as partisans, but as jurists. They would 
have investigated the case of other States whose Consti- 
tutions and laws disfranchise adult male citizens for other 
causes than treason or crime. In law, persons are held 
to have legal notice of whatever is shown by the record, 



28 NATIONAL ELECTIONS. 

whether they examine it or not. Hence these Democratic 
Senators knew that there were other States whose statutes 
violated the Fourteenth Amendment; that there were 
other oHgarchies besides Rhode Island. That the State 
of Delaware enforced a registration and tax qualification 
which disfranchised thousands of her working men, that 
the people were not permitted to vote for judicial officers. 
They knew that the same state of facts existed in Virginia, 
disfranchising the poor white and colored men. They 
knew that the same class of laws were enforced in other 
States; that the election machinery of such States as 
Mississippi had been so arranged that the election officers 
were virtually appointed by the governor, and that the 
people were deprived of the right to elect the State 
judges who were to decide upon their rights under these 
laws. 

Knowing this, the Democratic Senators knew that if 
their investigation extended to the Southern States, they 
would be compelled to report that the State organizations 
of Delaware, Virginia, Georgia, and South Carolina, were 
now oligarchies and not Republican forms of government. 
They knew that the " Home Rule" of Democratic rings 
in those States, was built up and maintained by the dis- 
franchisement of the poorer class of citizens ; and that if 
they did justice to all, they would strip the Democratic 
party of its majority in the House of Representatives, and 
place the control of the ele(5lions in the Southern States 
in the hands of Republicans and Greenbackers. To save 
their party they were blind to the facts except in Rhode 
Island and Massachusetts. To enable them, by the vote 
of the solid South in the electoral college, to ele6l a de- 
fender of State despotisms, they confined their researches 
for oligarchies to New England. 



NATIONAL ELECTIONS. 29 

IX. 
OLIGARCHIES DEFENDED. 

Having nominated their ticket and professed to be in 
favor of a free ballot, their organ at the Capitol of the 
Nation states the facts, in part, in regard to Virginia. In 
the Washingto7i Post of August i6th, under the head of 
" Persecuted Black Republicans,'^ The Post says, that the 
Republicans were hilarious over the divisions in Virginia, 
but, 

" It was discovered that the great mass of Virginia 
Radicals were as useless for political purposes, this year, 
as so many cows or coons, having been actually disfran- 
chised by State legislation. 

" But the intelligent public will understand that the 
statute by which a majority of the Virginia Republicans 
are disfranchised, this year, is in stri6l accordance with 
the Constitution as amended; that it applies to all classes, 
colors, parties and conditions; that its "cruel and relent- 
less persecution" consists of a provision that no man shall 
vote who has not, on or before a given date, paid a poll 
tax of one dollar, and that, in order to prevent wholesale 
bribery and the voting of masses of ignorant men like 
cattle, it is made a penal oifense for one man to pay this 
poll tax for another. 

" That's the whole of it. The State of Virginia, through 
her law-making mechanism, says to every voter in the 
commonwealth that his right to the ballot shall be sus- 
pended during any and every year in which he may not 
care to pay one dollar for the exercise of the elective 
franchise. And is there a man of any party, in any sec- 
tion, who will stand up and say that such legislation is 
wrong ? Ought suffrage to be made so cheap that a man 
who will not contribute one dollar a year to the support 
for local government shall have the same voting power as 
his honest, industrious, tax-paying neighbor? Does not 
the very fa6t that this a6l shuts a majority of the Virginia 
negroes out from the polls this year show that it is wise 
and timely ?" 



30 NATIONAL ELECTIONS,^ 

45,000 blacks, and 17,000 whites, the Post states, are 
disfranchised this year. 

A year ago the reported disfranchisement of 71,000 
voters would have taken away two representatives from 
that State. The fa6l remains that Virginia is an oligarchy 
according to the report of the Wallace Committee, and 
the right to make it so is openly justified. Virginia alone, 
of all the States, has made it a penal offense to pay the 
poll-tax or clerk's fees of a voter. No New England 
oligarchy has made poverty a crime to that extent. 

The Post gleefully claims that the poll-tax law is con- 
stitutional because it does not violate the Fifteenth 
Amendment. That it violates the Fourteenth Amend- 
ment is conceded by the Wallace Committee of the 
Senate. 

The Fourteenth Amendment prohibits the States from 
abridging the " privileges or immunities of citizens of the 
United States," in the first seclion, and in the second 
section, protects the right of suffrage as a right belonging 
to adult male citizens of the United States, inhabitants of 
a State. This is not to be construed in accordance with 
the old colonial rule that suffrage was a grant, a franchise 
to be given or taken away by the king. 

The Fifteenth Amendment recognizes the right of 
citizens of the United States to vote, and prohibits the 
United States or the States from denying that right on 
account of color, race, or previous condition of servitude.* 
This Amendment applies to territorial and local eledlions, 

* What Southern Supremacy Means. 

Co72gressman Blackburn, of Kentucky, in the House of Representatives, 
April 3, 187 g. 
For the- first time in eiejhteen years the Democracy is back in power in 
both branches of Congre'ss. We propose to celebrate her return to power 
by wipint? from the statute book those degrading restrictions on freemen 
(the election laws), and by striking away the shackles which partisan 
legislation has imposed. We do not intend to stop until we have stricken 
the last vestige of your war measures from the statute book— until we 
have an untrammeled election and an unsupervised ballot. 



NATIONAL ELECTIONS. 



31 



as well as State and national eledions. If, under these 
Amendments, a State may impose a penal poll-tax or 
property qualification, the United States may do the same. 
Any party making such an Act of Congress and disfran- 
chising the working men of the nation, would be swept 
out of existence. State centralization is the only means 
by which the rights conferred by those Amendments can 
be annulled. 

X. 

THE NOMINATION OF GARFIELD. 

The crowning crime, charged upon the Republican 
party, is that their candidate for President is a Christian 
priest. General Garfield is eligible to membership in the 
League, and is entitled, so far as his priest-hood is con- 
cerned, to be its Presidential nominee. He is in favor of 
" the absolute secularization of the government," and com- 
plies with the sole test of the Cincinnati platform. 

The Cincinnati Congress made the test simply "the 
absolute secularization of the government," and being " in 
favor of perfect civil and intelledual liberty." This is 
shown by the following resolutions : 

Resolved, That we mutually pledge each other that we 
will, in our several localities, use our influence and cast 
our votes for such candidates for office as believe, and 
publicly declare their belief, in the absolute secularization 
of the Government, and we recommend that the State and 
auxiliary leagues in their respedive locaUties ad together 
upon all political questions. 

Resolved, That we claim it to be the duty of every true 
Liberal to extend to all others every right that he claims 
for himself; that he cannot politically discriminate against 
any person on account of religious belief, provided only 
that such a person is in favor of perfect civil and intellec- 
tual liberty. 



32 NATIONAL ELECTIONS. 

General Garfield is not a bigot. This is shown by his 
speech in Congress on the revision of the postal laws in 
1876. He voted for the Blaine Amendment for the sepa- 
ration of church and State in 1876. He endorses the 
Republican platform of 1880, as shown by the emphatic 
statement in his letter of acceptance. 

If Garfield has been a preacher in the church of the 
Disciples, he was such not by any ordination, pretense of 
apostolic succession, credentials from conference, synod, 
presbytery, or pope, but because in that denomination 
every man was his own priest. Every thinker was en- 
titled to speak freely his own thoughts. Alexander 
Campbell, the founder of the Disciples church in this 
country, knew no ecclesiastical master. He was inde- 
pendent, and by his honesty to his own thought, his 
scholarship, his industry, he laid the foundations for much 
of the liberalism of the present day. If any proof is 
wanted, the Chicago Convention furnished it, when the 
West Virginians refused to pledge themselves to abide by 
the action of the Convention, and were bravely and 
successfully defended by General Garfield. 

On the question of suffrage, he demands in national 
eledions, " that every eledor shall be permitted, freely 
and without intimidation, to cast his lawful ballot at such 
election and have it honesdy counted, and that the potency 
of his vote shall not be destroyed by the fraudulent vote 
of any other person." 

General Rosecrans, in a recent interview, states that 
while General Garfield was serving as his chief of staff, he 
was tendered the nomination for Congress in the Ashtabula 
district ; that he hesitated about accepting it, and asked 
his advice; " I replied," says General Rosecrans, " that 
I not only thought he could accept it with honor, but that 
I deemed it to be his duty to do so. The war is not yet 
over, I said, nor will it be for some time to come. There 
will be many questions arising in Congress which require 



NATIONAL ELECTIONS. 33 

not alone statesmanlike treatment, but the advice of men 
having an acquaintance with military affairs will be 
needed ; and for that and several other reasons which I 
named, he would, I believed, do equally as good service 
to his country in Congress as in the field." 

Recurring to the nomination, General Rosecrans said : 
"I consider Garfield head and shoulders above any of the 
men named before the Convention, and far superior to 
any of the political managers upon the floor. He is a man 
with broad views, has always been a consistent Repub- 
lican, and has a clean record. I cannot believe that 
James A. Garfield was ever guilty of a dishonest act. As 
the campaign progresses it will be found, if it is not now 
acknowledged, that Garfield is a hard man to beat." 

With Garfield in the Presidential chair, we shall see 
needed reforms pushed forward, the right to the ballot 
and to a fair count sacredly proteded, the rights of labor 
proteded, a total separation of church and State, and 
broad and liberal views carried out in legislation, and in 
the executive departments of the government. 

XI. 

THE DEMAND OF THE HOUR. 

Liberals should forego their private grievances, direct 
their energies to the establishment of and protection of 
the people in free thought, free speech, untrammeled and 
equal political privileges — to national protection of per- 
sonal and political rights against violence, fraud and des- 
potism under the forms of law. We must demand for 
others what we demand for ourselves. We cannot de- 
mand protection from the dogmas of priestcraft, and at 
the same time enforce the dogmas of kingcraft against the 
workingmen of the nation, black or white. We must de- 
mand that the rights of manhood shall be protected and 
enforced, by the strong arm of the nation, upon every 



34 NATIONAL ELECTIONS. 

foot of our soil. When such men as Blaine and Ingersoll, 
who concede the political demands of the Liberal League, 
stand by the Republican party and its candidates, we 
need not hesitate to join them in the grand work of estab- 
lishing the national government on the broad ground- 
work of justice, equality, and protection to all citizens. 

So long as the Liberal League stands by its platform 
of 1879, its members can have no alliance with the Dem- 
ocratic party — the party that clings to the dead past, and 
year by year brings out in their filmy shrouds the ghosts 
of "State Rights " and " the Constitution as it was," and 
honors them as living realities. 

The Liberal League cannot take a step backward. It 
cannot join the party that lives in the memory of its cow- 
ard statesmen and its judges who revered the decisions 
and dogmas of royal judges and worshipped as sacred 
the antiquated edicts of titled robbers. It must still place 
the rights of man above the rights of state or national or- 
ganizations, and demand for all citizens, without respect 
of race or sex, the same rights which its members claim 
for themselves as the rights inherent to manhood. 

The Democratic party has made the issue that it has a 
right to disfranchise whom it pleases, that the colored 
man and the poor man have no right to vote, and the 
infidel no right to hold office, unless they choose to per- 
mit it. It is the party of prejudice, intolerance, barbarity, 
and fraud. Tissue-ballots, the shot-gun, business and 
social ostracism, and counting out the honest vote, and 
counting in candidates whether ele6led or not, are its 
chosen means of success. The contest is but another 
form of the same forces which upheld slavery. It is no 
longer a race contest. It is not directed against the 
African alone. It is not sectional. The intent of the 
Democratic aristocracy is to prevent the poorer classes, 
black and white, especially the laboring men of the 
country, from having any voice in or control ot the 



NATIONAL ELECTIONS. 35 

government. If successful, the centralization of power in 
the State governors of the South will be increased, so that 
free thought and independence of action will be crushed 
out. There can be no progress. Liberal views will not 
be tolerated. The statutes which deny justice v/ill not 
be repealed. The rule of the Christian aristocracy will be 
firmly established ; new religious tests instituted : the old 
colonial doctrine, that none but Christians have political 
or personal rights which governments are bound to pro- 
tect and respect, will again be the statute rule of the States 
which claim a sovereign right to legislate on the subjects 
of religion and suffrage as they please, so that the legisla- 
tion is not based on discriminations of color. 

No Liberal who is true to the principles of free thought, 
free speech, a free and honest ballot, the sacredness of 
individual rights over the rights of the corporations 
known as State governments, can for a moment think of 
voting for Hancock. The Democratic party is the party 
of pretense and promise, of cant, centralization, and 
crime, of force and fraud, of ostracism and outrage, of 
political slavery and partisan sovereignty. With it, the 
party is the State, treason to the party, treason to the 
State— the President and Congress the agents of the 
State officers, and the courts of the United States official 
boards to register the decrees of State courts. 

No honest Greenbacker who believes in the rights of 
labor and the sovereignty of man, can ally himself or vote 
with such a party. No Republican with the memories of 
the past before him, in justice to the heroic dead and the 
living victims of partisan hate and oppression, can desert 
Garfield and Arthur. 



•r? J J 



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